All posts by Peter Ridge

Peter is a product development and management professional whose career has spanned from computer hardware and software engineering to product packaging, print advertising and user experience design. He is a published author and has applied his skills to a variety of businesses from start up ventures to top-10 media companies.
Hardware

Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000/8000 Flashing Red LED & Battery Doesn’t Charge

413 Comments

Ran into a situation with a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 that also seems to plague the Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. When placing the Laser Mouse on its charging cradle, the LED on the top of the mouse slowly flashes green for a few seconds, as if it was successfully charging the NiMH battery inside, but then switches to rapidly flashing the LED red.

Taking the rechargeable battery out also results in the flashing red LED. So, the battery is clearly not being recharged. This is further corroborated by the short battery life.

Microsoft LaserMouse 7000 upside-down with open battery compartment
Microsoft LaserMouse 7000 upside-down with open battery compartment

I saw online that some people have found some sort of button underneath the battery and that it’s not being depressed. However, the mouse I was having problems with did not have such a button. There is a small hole under the battery, but no switch or button in the hole.

Upon further investigation, I noticed that the positive metal plate in the battery compartment of the mouse has two plastic rails holding it in place.

Battery removed showing the plastic rails at the positive conductor
Battery removed showing the plastic rails at the positive conductor

When putting the battery inside, the rails tend to press back against the top of the battery such that the battery’s tip doesn’t make good contact with the metal. Since the metal plate is tapered inward, it only makes reliable contact with the battery when the battery is pushed all the way down into the compartment.

Notice the short tip on the rechargeable battery and the rails pressing back against it
Notice the short tip on the rechargeable battery and the rails pressing back against it

As a result of this plastic getting in the way and preventing the battery from making contact with the positive conducting plate, of course it can’t recharge. It also explains why it only charges for a few seconds–just until the battery slips out of position and loses contact. However, the fix for this recharging problem is rather simple.

Fold the paper (left); place on top of battery (center); insert into mouse (right)
Fold the paper (left); place on top of battery (center); insert into mouse (right)
  1. Cut a small piece of paper a little shorter than the length of the battery and about twice as wide
  2. Fold the paper in half to achieve a thickness of two sheets of paper
  3. Place the battery into the battery compartment
  4. Put the paper on top of the battery
  5. Close the battery cover

The cover should go on snugly so that it firmly presses the battery into the compartment. That will enable the positive tip of the Laser Mouse’s battery to stay in contact with the positive conductor plate. If it doesn’t press firmly enough, add one more sheet that’s half the width of the first one (for a thickness of three sheets).

After applying this little fix, the problem mouse’s LED properly throbs green and charges up completely.

(Update: Added photos)

Software

Redirect Output from Time Command to a File

1 Comment

If you want to find out how long a program takes to execute, you can use the Linux time command. It outputs the real, user and system resources used by the command you specify. For example, to see how long the ls command takes to execute on the current directory, you run time ls and get something like the following:

real 0m0.005s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s

However, by default, the time command outputs this information to the standard error device and, as a result, it’s not always obvious how to get this information into a file.

If you’re using the GNU time command, it’s pretty easy with the -o or --output option. For example, the following command writes the time information from executing ls into the file time.log:

time -o time.log ls

On some systems, such as a Linux server I was using recently, the only available time command may be the one built into the shell. This time command does not have an output option. As a result, if you want to redirect the output of both the time command and the program it’s executing, you might think you want to do the following:

time ls > output.log 2>&1

Then, you discover that it doesn’t work as expected. All you get in the log file is the output of the ls command while the time command still prints to the console, even though you redirected standard error to standard out.

Why does this happen? It’s because those redirects apply only to the ls command, not to the time command. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution. Group the time command and the program you want it to time using parentheses. Try changing the previous command to the following:

( time ls ) > output.log 2>&1

When you view the output.log file now, you’ll find that the output of both the ls and time commands went into the log file, as desired.

Miscellaneous

New Year, New Look

Leave a comment

Welcome to the new Turbulent Sky. For all of you who’ve been following along, this is quite a face lift. Hope you like the new look. There may be some niggles and bugs that I haven’t yet fixed or discovered, so feel free to leave a comment if you find anything broken. I’ve moved the blog off from the “blog” subdomain since there’s no need to differentiate it that way and shortened the URLs of the posts by removing the date. Redirects should get any old links over to the right place. Feedburner has been updated as well so that all the RSS and Atom feeds point to the new location.

Enjoy!

Miscellaneous

Goodbye, 2008

3 Comments

It’s hard to believe that yet another year has gone by. They seem to go faster every year. After blogging for over a year now, what’s new for 2009?

Of course, more fixes to interesting tech problems (including a long-standing Microsoft Word data corruption bug that I think I’ve finally worked around). Also, a new theme for this blog is certainly in order. I believe I’ve finally found one that I like that also fits the blog’s name. So, I’ll be busy with that for a little bit to get things dialed in and working just right.

Meanwhile, feel free to leave comments, questions and suggestions. Here’s hoping that your digital life in 2009 is prosperous and trouble-free.

Software

Kubuntu 8.10 Video Flashing, Flickering, Blanking

30 Comments

Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) on my laptop makes the screen flash on and off repeated every 10 seconds or so. The video output is actually turning on and off. It was driving me crazy. Here’s how to fix it.

My laptop has an Intel 945GM but this problem seems to affect other cards such as the GMA915 and some ATI as well. It has also manifested itself as flicker, rather than the periodic blanking that I’m experiencing.

According to bug 278471, this problem is associated with the monitor detection function in KDE4. So, to stop the flickering, flashing and blanking, simply turn off the detection service as follows.

  1. Click on the K menu
  2. Go to the Applications tab
  3. Click on the System menu followed by System Settings
  4. In the System Settings window, click on the Advanced tab
  5. Click on the Service Manager
  6. In the Startup Services list, select the service named, “Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes” so that it’s highlighted
  7. Click the Stop button to stop the service, then click the checkbox to clear it (so it doesn’t start up anymore)
  8. Click the Apply button

Voila! No more flashing. What a relief. After this bug is fixed, you can turn the service back on so that Kubuntu can detect monitors again.